
Apache Kafka Experts in Germany
to build reliable event-driven systems with fast, precise AI matchingHire experts who design Kafka event streams, connect data platforms with Kafka Connect and operate resilient clusters across cloud and on-premise environments. FRATCH matches you with vetted, available freelancers who fit your requirements quickly and precisely.
Meet FRATCH Experts in Germany, who have recently used Apache Kafka
Timo H.
Last position:
Software Developer at Smiths Detection
- Extension of a Swing-based UI for recording Security Restricted Articles during baggage screening.
- Introduction of a new workflow for recording Deboarding Events.
- Extension of the reporting system for Security Restricted Articles and Deboarding Events.
- Implementation using JBoss Wildfly, PostgreSQL, spring-boot 3.x, Java 8/21, Swing, JSF, JAX-RS/Resteasy, Docker, Maven, Kiro.
Shamaila M.
Last position:
Founder/Kubernetes and Cloud Architect at Kubekanvas
- Developed browser based platform for kubernetes no-code deployment and cluster management
- Developed CLI in Typescript to deploy the resources in the cluster without leaving the browser UI.
- Implemented DevSecOps pipelines: image scanning, SBOM, policy enforcement, supply-chain security and used Kyverno. Implemented IAM integration for the command line utility tool.
- Designed role & permission models for Keycloak, oAuth/OIDC, social login flows.
- Used LLM to convert user intent into the diagram.
- Worked on integration with multiple Sovereign Cloud like stackIt, Hetzner, CIVO, UpCloud plus public clouds like AWS, GCP, Azure
- The technology stack includes Java, SpringBoot, Kubernetes, OpenAI, Kubernetes multi-tenancy using vCluster, Karpenter, RBAC for CLI, Helm, React
Vili D.
Last position:
Technical Lead, Data Engineer at Mercedes-Benz Consulting
Optimized the data architecture (Medallion) to better decouple processing steps and improve transparency and reproducibility
Ensured the technical quality of data processing in Databricks by introducing schema enforcement, data quality checks, and a structured data architecture
Pipeline orchestration with Azure Data Factory
Improved and automated the development and deployment process by integrating Git and GitHub Actions
Technical leadership of the Data Engineering team (3 employees)
Led workshops to optimize and stabilize the data platform and development process
Collected and prioritized new requests and maintained the product backlog
Technologies: Microsoft Azure (Data Lake, Data Factory), Databricks, Apache Spark (PySpark), Python, SQL, Git, Confluence, Power BI, Power Apps, Dataverse, MS Sharepoint, Mural
Robert D.
Last position:
Software Architect at FinTech / Wealth Management
- Analysis of existing microservice structures and integration into the event-driven architecture
- Design and implementation of prototypes
- Introduction of structured workflows and integration into a solid testing strategy
- Team: Small specialized team (3-5 people) from analysis through implementation readiness
- Documentation of architectural decisions and definition of interfaces
- Integration of the event-driven pipeline into the existing landscape
- Technologies: Kafka, Docker, Microservices, Event-Driven Architecture, Java, Liquibase
Umut G.
Last position:
Data Architect at BA Technology
I am an experienced data engineer specializing in end‑to‑end data integration, cloud DWH architectures, and high‑quality, governed data products.
I delivered following projects and engagements as a freelancer.
- Data Migration of CRM System for AL-FA Objekt Service Gmbh
- Microsoft Software Resales Partnership
I am looking for freelance roles like: Freelance Data Engineer Cloud Data Warehouse Architect Data Modeling & Architecture Consultant MDM & Data Governance Specialist BI & Analytics Developer
Technical Focus Areas
- Data Engineering & Integration: SQL Server/SSIS, Informatica PowerCenter/IDQ, Talend, Kafka, Azure Data Factory – Delta/CDC/ELT patterns, robust pipelines, monitoring/recovery, data lineage & impact analysis, medallion architecture Bronze/Silver/Gold layers
- DWH & Cloud: Azure SQL / Data Lake / Synapse, AWS Redshift/S3, on‑prem SQL/Oracle – scalable data marts with a strong cost/benefit focus.
- Data Modeling: Atomic (Inmon) and Dimensional (Kimball), Data Vault (Linstedt), Domain‑Driven Design, clear lineage & contracts.
- MDM & Governance: Informatica MDM, IBM MDM, stewardship processes, data quality rules, survivorship/XREF, catalog/glossary, SIF/BES/REST publication.
- Analytics/BI: Power BI, SSAS, Cognos – business‑ready, maintainable data products.
Hachem S.
Last position:
Machine Learning & BI Lecturer at EU Business School
- Taught ML, BI, and Big Data to Master's students.
Tech: Python, Power BI, SQL, ML, SnowflakeDB, databricks, MS Fabric, MongoDB, LLM
Ornel Franck W.
Last position:
Sales Partner at ERGO PRO
- Industry: Insurance, Trade, IT
- Customers & Projects: Consulting and selling insurance and similar services
- Main tasks: Insurance consulting (health insurance, retirement planning, wealth building); commercial services, inside and field sales; sales data analysis and forecasting; customer consulting and support; opening a new sales headquarters for private and business customers; business development & innovation management; business use case development; process optimization; stakeholder management; team leadership and training; preparation and delivery of trainings;
- Technologies used: Microsoft Office 365, Microsoft Teams, Jira, Draw.IO, Camunda 8, Java (8, 17,21,25), Git, Spring Boot, Spring Batch, Spring Data REST, Spring Web, Spring Security, J-Unit, Playwright, Lombock, Vaadin, H2, PostgreSQL (16, 17 18), pgAdmin, Docker, LLMs, JasperSoft Studio, JasperReports
Khalid E.
Last position:
Lead Architect & Developer at kem-consulting
Development of an agent-based governance platform for the automated assurance of EU AI Act compliance and ODA-compliant orchestration of AI services in complex enterprise environments.
Design and implementation of an agent-based "Mission Control" framework (Aletheia Conductor) for autonomous state monitoring and process control.
Development of "Compliance-as-Code" (CaC) solutions based on OPA/Rego for system-wide enforcement of regulatory guardrails.
Integration of TM Forum ODA standards (TMF630, TMF622, TMF642) to ensure interoperability and standardization.
Building a highly available event-driven architecture using Redpanda and CloudEvents v1.0 for near-real-time event processing.
Implementation of an audit-proof "Evidence Chain" through cryptographic linking of trace logs in preparation for automated audits.
Tech Stack: Java 21 (Quarkus Native), TypeScript (Next.js), Redpanda (Kafka API), CloudEvents v1.0, OPA (Open Policy Agent) & Rego, TimescaleDB, ZincSearch, Redis, TM Forum ODA, Git, GitHub, Clean Code Development, Like-C4.
Kiriakos K.
Last position:
Tech Lead / Architect : OTTO API Platform at OTTO
Maturing their API practices on both a business and technology level. My role covers strategy, architecture, developer advocacy as well as hands-on software engineering, enabling both technical teams and business leadership to adopt and act on API-centric principles effectively. Coincidentally, we also establish GitOps, DX and platform best practices with this project.
Highlights:
- Aligning executives with the initiative by clarifying strategy, replacing misconceptions and myths with facts, clarifying the value of existing assets and enabling informed decision-making
- Formulating a way forward for API Lifecycle Management at OTTO
- Driving platform progress and fostering developer engagement by hands-on engineering work towards strategic goals
API Lifecycle Management, Team Topologies, Organizational Evolution, Regulatory, Platform Advocate, Developer Platform, Communities of Practice, Terraform, Kotlin, Kafka, Kong, WSO2, Apigee, Gravitee, Backstage, AsyncAPI, OpenAPI, API Design, AWS, React, Node.js, TypeScript, Redocly, reactive programming, CDC, Golang, Gin, GitOps, DX (developer experience), stakeholder management, roadmaps, workshops, discovery.
Sercan T.
Last position:
Co-Founder & Lead Software Architect at Pflege-Pfad
- Focus: System architecture, cloud-native platforms, microservices, API design
- Product: Pflege-Pfad is a digital placement platform that directly connects relatives of people in need of care with verified care services and caregivers – without an agency and without ongoing fees.
- Business analysis & process design:
- Analysis of the German care market and identification of the key pain points of both target groups.
- Modeling of core business processes: registration, verification, care request, application, placement, and rating.
- Definition of the business model as a freemium/premium model with optional contact unlocking.
- Creation of user stories and requirements documentation for relatives, care services, and administrators.
- Design of trust and quality assurance mechanisms with document upload, admin review process, and rating system.
- Coordination with stakeholders and validation of product decisions with potential users.
- Technical implementation:
- Design and implementation of the entire platform architecture as the sole developer.
- Design and implementation of a REST API with Spring Boot and Kotlin, including JWT-based authentication.
- Development of the frontend as a single-page application with Angular 17.
- Implementation of the AWS infrastructure with EC2, RDS PostgreSQL, S3, CloudFront, and IAM.
- Document upload with AWS S3 using presigned URLs to verify care services.
- Email notifications via Resend API.
- AI-supported care service search via OpenAI API.
- Implementation of complete user flows such as registration, login, password reset, and the placement process.
- Development of an admin panel for user and care service management as well as analytics.
- CI/CD with GitHub Actions and containerized deployments with Docker.
- End-to-end tests with Playwright.
Technologies: Kotlin, Spring Boot 3, Spring Security, JWT, JPA/Hibernate, PostgreSQL, Angular 17, TypeScript, RxJS, AWS (EC2, ECS, S3, CloudFront CDN, RDS PostgreSQL, IAM), nginx, GitHub Actions, Playwright, Maven, Git, OpenAI API, Resend API, Docker, Scrum, i18n (DE/EN/TR), Kiro, feature flag architecture.
Jens R.
Last position:
Platform Architect & Senior Developer at Direct client, industrial measurement technology, medium-sized company
- Technical leadership across hardware, firmware, and software teams; scope: hardware/firmware team (4 people) and leadership group (5 people)
- Consolidated and documented a product family that had grown over more than 15 years and aligned it with CRA compliance — from the bare-metal I/O module to the cloud interface.
- Provided the most important customer product with the essential requirements and architecture documentation within two months — for a firmware landscape that had grown over more than 15 years. It now supports the customer’s modernization strategy.
- Established a monthly reporting line to the supervisory board and executive board within three months: nine meetings since 12/2025. The report itself is versioned and built from the CI pipeline; it is based on automatically collected activity and release data instead of assessments.
- Built a container-based CI/CD infrastructure from scratch: cross-compilation, host tests, and documentation builds in one continuous pipeline.
- Introduced declarative QA gates for DevOps and development artifacts — from the start using lefthook instead of pre-commit, executed in a dedicated container image.
Technologies used: arc42, req42, tpo42, docToolchain, PlantUML, ArchiMate, C4 model, ADR, C, C++ (GTest), CMake, Bare Metal (ARM Cortex-M3/M7), OCI containers, Jenkins, lefthook, Prometheus, Grafana, SBOM, CRA, OPC, SCADA, PLC integration, IPv6 migration, Zero Trust, Sociocracy 3.0, Cynefin
Collin K.
Last position:
Software Architect / Fullstack Developer at Equity Bytes
Built an international e-commerce platform for a multi-vendor marketplace for digital assets from scratch. Designed and operated cloud native architectures at enterprise scale.
- Designed and operated a highly scalable microservice and serverless architecture
- Built the complete cloud infrastructure with Terraform + AWS CDK in AWS
- Provisioned ECS/EKS clusters (Fargate), Application Load Balancers (reverse proxy), and Lambda functions
- Observability & tracing with CloudWatch, DataDog, Prometheus, and Grafana
- End-to-end setup with DataDog (formerly AWS CloudWatch), Prometheus, and custom Grafana dashboards
- Integration of advanced metrics (including ORM mapper) and distributed tracing with Jaeger
- Robust backup and disaster recovery strategies
- RDS Postgres backups and hourly snapshots
- Read-only, asynchronously synchronized replicas with automated master failover in emergencies
- Minute-level rollback capability through versioned Docker images on ECS and Git-based CI/CD pipelines
- Created CI/CD pipelines with GitHub Actions for automated multi-stage deployments (Dev, Testing, Prod)
- Integrated Stripe for international payment processing
- Built a marketplace payment system with multiple parties and payout routines
- Used Algolia for high-performance real-time search of digital assets on the platform
- Federation of services with GraphQL and Hasura
- Later migration to GraphQL Mesh
- Test Driven Development (TDD) - unit, integration, and E2E testing with Jest, Vitest, and Playwright
- Used Next.js / React for modern frontend applications in the nx monorepo
- Enterprise security architecture & access control
- Integration of JWT tokens with Auth0, OAuth, OIDC, IP guards, BOLA protection, and secret vaults
- Authorization concepts with RBAC, ABAC, and native Postgres Row-Level Security (RLS)
- Built internal microfrontends with Retool for fast prototyping and operational business processes
Technologies: ABAC, AWS CDK, AWS CloudWatch, AWS ECS, AWS EKS, AWS Fargate, AWS RDS, AWS S3, Algolia, Auth0, DataDog, Docker, GitHub Actions, Grafana, GraphQL, GraphQL Mesh, Hasura, JWT, Jaeger, Java, JavaScript, Jest, Kotlin, Kubernetes, Monorepo, Next.js, OIDC, Playwright, Postgres, Postgres RLS, Prometheus, RBAC, Redis, Retool, Serverless, Stripe, Terraform, TypeScript, Vitest
Alexander Z.
Last position:
Senior Data Solutions Engineer at VMware Inc.
- Architected and deployed private cloud data platform on VMware vSphere, integrating Greenplum MPP, Apache Kafka, Kubernetes, and Apache Solr, and developed real-time ingestion pipelines with Kafka Connect and Schema Registry.
- Led Oracle Exadata to Greenplum migration, rearchitected data models, optimized storage, implemented RabbitMQ with Debezium for CDC, and deployed VectorDB for Generative AI.
- Designed and executed multi-cloud migration PoC across AWS, Azure, and GCP, defined KPIs for throughput, latency, and cost efficiency, executed bulk data transfers, validated analytics and streaming workloads, and delivered full-scale architecture recommendations.
- Assessed legacy on-premises infrastructure and designed modern cloud-native data platforms using Greenplum and containerized microservices, advising on scalability, disaster recovery, and high-availability.
Ales L.
Last position:
Senior DevOps Consultant (Freelance) at European Union Agency (via IBM)
- Worked as freelance Senior DevOps Consultant on-site for IBM at a European Union Agency, operating in a highly secure, air-gapped environment managing classified systems.
- Led automation and DevOps initiatives for a large-scale OpenShift platform (>400 nodes), driving deployment efficiency, GitOps adoption, and operational automation using Ansible, Python, and Bash while ensuring compliance with security requirements.
- Spearheaded automation of release and deployment workflows in a private cloud environment hosting 400+ OpenShift nodes, significantly improving deployment speed and reliability.
- Migrated existing playbooks, roles, and templates from Ansible Tower to Ansible Automation Platform (AAP), ensuring full compliance with fully-qualified collection names (FQCN) and preparing custom Execution Environments (EE) for containerized automation.
- Implemented GitOps Agent for AAP Controller Configuration as Code, enabling automated synchronization (CRUD) of Ansible Controller objects based on repository-stored configuration definitions using GitHub webhooks.
- Designed and automated complex multi-step operational workflows including environment cleanup, Helix cluster component re-creation, Kafka topic management, and OpenShift object lifecycle management across ~100 environments.
- Achieved a reduction of multi-day manual operations to under a few hours through automation improvements spanning multiple AAP clusters and OpenShift environments.
- Integrated Ansible Automation Platform with Thycotic (Delinea) Secret Server via lookup plugin to enhance secure credential management in automated processes.
- Managed deployment tasks, platform troubleshooting, and Istio network configurations while adhering to stringent EU PSC security and compliance standards.
- Collaborated with infrastructure and application teams to refine deployment procedures, develop naming conventions, and continuously improve automation coverage in an air-gapped, classified environment.
Boian V.
Last position:
Solution Architect at DB InfraGO AG
The Base Services of DB InfraGO form a central data hub between the company’s IT systems. Common Data Services are developed that distribute data from source systems to a variety of downstream systems (via JMS) and make them available (via REST API). The existing service landscape based on TIBCO is being migrated to DB InfraGO’s cloud-native platform.
- Architecture design and implementation for performance-optimized bulk data processing of several million datasets at specific times during the day
- Technical specification and documentation of business requirements
- Integration of various subsystems (including SAP and Salesforce) through the reimplementation of more than 40 microservices based on Spring Boot
- Migration of TIBCO Based microservices from the Enterprise Integration Platform to the Cloud Native Platform using Spring-Boot
- Establishment of a deployment pipeline using GitLab CI/CD, Artifactory, and automated deployment to a Kubernetes environment with the help of ArgoCD
- Definition and implementation of automated unit, integration, and regression tests
Team Size: 9
Technologies/Tools: Java, Spring Boot, ActiveMQ(JMS), JUnit, Tibco Business Works, Gitlab (CI/CD), Kubernetes (Amazon AWS), ArgoCD, postgreSQL, Oracle, Postman, Hoppscotch, openAPI, Sonarqube
Discover over 15,000 top freelancers
Statistics of experts using Apache Kafka
Aggregated from the professional profiles of matched freelancers.
Experience
18 years

Position duration
2.7 years

Positions per freelancer
13

Top business areas
Information Technology, Product Development, Quality Assurance

Top industries
Information Technology, Banking and Finance, Automotive

Certification focus areas
Information Technology, Product Development, Project Management
Bachelor's degree or higher
92%
Master's degree or higher
56%
Doctorate
8%

Certifications per freelancer
2

Most common languages
German, English, French

Speak two or more languages
97%
Based on our profile pool as of 29 Oct 2026.
Daily rate distribution
The chart shows how the daily rates of experts in this technology in Germany are distributed, based on recent contracts on our platform. Each bar covers a rate range — its height shows the share of experts charging within that range.
Discover detailed Apache Kafka rate benchmarks:
Explore rate insightsAverage rates of experts in Germany using Apache Kafka
Rates are based on recent contracts and do not include FRATCH margin.
The average daily rate is the mean of all daily rates from recent contracts of comparable freelancers on our platform.
The median daily rate is the middle value of all daily rates — half of comparable freelancers charge less, half charge more. Unlike the average, it is barely affected by outliers.
Calculated based on our freelancers’ daily rates as of 29 Oct 2026. Actual rates may vary depending on seniority level, experience, skill specialization, project complexity, and engagement length.
Apache Kafka experts industry focus
See which industries our matched freelancers work in most often — every figure is calculated live from the freelancers on FRATCH.
- Information Technology (95%)
- Banking and Finance (58%)
- Automotive (42%)
- Retail (40%)
- Transportation (35%)
- Manufacturing (33%)
- Insurance (30%)
- Healthcare (29%)
Please note that freelancers can work across multiple industries, so percentages overlap.
About the technology
Event streaming
Apache Kafka is a distributed event streaming platform for moving, storing and processing continuous streams of data. Companies use it to connect services, capture business events and make information available to multiple systems without tight point-to-point dependencies. Kafka began at LinkedIn and is now an Apache project with a broad commercial ecosystem.
Typical systems
Kafka supports high-volume, asynchronous communication across applications and data platforms. Common use cases include:
- Event-driven microservices and service integration
- Real-time analytics, monitoring and fraud detection
- Data pipelines for warehouses, lakes and operational stores
- Change data capture from databases
- Log, clickstream and IoT event processing
Ecosystem and tooling
Strong Kafka specialists work across brokers, topics, partitions, replication and consumer groups. They may use Kafka Connect for source and sink integrations, Kafka Streams for application-level processing and Schema Registry for governed data contracts. Confluent Kafka services, Apache Flink and cloud-native deployment tools often appear alongside the core platform.
When expertise matters
Companies bring in freelance Kafka professionals when an event platform must be introduced, reworked or stabilized without slowing product teams. Specialist support is useful for migration from queues or batch pipelines, cluster sizing, security design and production incident prevention. In Germany, Kafka commonly supports manufacturing, automotive, finance, logistics and commerce systems, with collaboration often split between remote delivery and on-site work.
Delivery responsibilities
A capable expert can translate business events into durable topic and schema designs. Typical deliverables include:
- Topic, partition and retention strategies
- Secure cluster configurations with authentication and authorization
- Kafka Connect integrations and connector operations
- Kafka Streams or Flink processing pipelines
- Monitoring, alerting, recovery and capacity runbooks
What quality looks like
Quality work keeps ordering, delivery guarantees and replay behavior explicit rather than assumed. Strong professionals test failure scenarios, handle consumer lag and schema evolution, and document operational ownership. They also connect Kafka to the wider stack, including Kubernetes, databases, observability tools and CI/CD workflows, while explaining trade-offs clearly to distributed teams.
Frequently asked questions
Everything clients usually want to know about Apache Kafka, in one place.
Apache Kafka is used to publish, store and process streams of events between applications and data systems. It supports event-driven services, real-time analytics, database change capture, integration pipelines and reliable data replay.
Apache Kafka is designed as a distributed event log, so messages can remain available for replay and several consumer groups can read the same stream independently. Traditional queues often focus on handing each message to a consumer, while Kafka is usually chosen for durable streams, high throughput and decoupled data distribution.
A strong Kafka specialist usually understands data contracts, schema evolution, REST or gRPC services, databases and cloud infrastructure. Useful adjacent experience includes Kafka Connect, Kafka Streams, Confluent Platform, Kubernetes, Apache Flink, security controls and observability.
The right level depends on the risk and scope of the system, not on a fixed tenure requirement. A focused connector or pipeline task may need a different profile from a production migration involving partition strategy, disaster recovery, security and operational ownership.
Apache Kafka work is often suitable for remote collaboration because configuration, code, documentation and monitoring can be handled through shared tools. On-site sessions may still help with architecture workshops, regulated environments or coordination with operations teams, and German or English communication should match the project.
Apache Kafka and Apache Pulsar both support distributed event streaming, but they make different choices around storage architecture, topic management and operations. The better fit depends on existing skills, cloud setup, retention needs, scaling patterns and the surrounding ecosystem rather than on feature lists alone.
Look for evidence of clear event contracts, tested failure handling and deliberate choices around partitions, replication and delivery semantics. A reliable Kafka professional also measures consumer lag, documents recovery procedures and explains how the design behaves during schema changes or broker outages.
Working with Apache Kafka often involves balancing application needs with platform operations. Freelancers may design topics and schemas, build connectors or stream processing, troubleshoot lag and coordinate with security, data and infrastructure teams across remote or on-site settings.
The average hourly rate of freelancers in Germany who have used Apache Kafka in their recent projects is 98 €, which corresponds to a daily rate of about 783 € based on an 8-hour working day.
Of the freelancers in Germany who have used Apache Kafka in their recent projects, 92% hold at least a Bachelor's degree, 56% hold at least a Master's degree, and 8% hold a doctorate.
On average, freelancers in Germany who have used Apache Kafka in their recent projects have 18 years of professional experience, with a single engagement typically lasting around 2.7 years.
The most common languages among freelancers in Germany who have used Apache Kafka in their recent projects are German (97%), English (97%), and French (16%).
The most common industries among freelancers in Germany who have used Apache Kafka in their recent projects are Information Technology (95%), Banking and Finance (58%), and Automotive (42%).
The most common business areas among freelancers in Germany who have used Apache Kafka in their recent projects are Information Technology (99%), Product Development (92%), and Quality Assurance (57%).
Main locations of FRATCH Experts, who have recently used Apache Kafka
Our freelancers and interim experts are at home across the DACH region — available on-site in the major business hubs or fully remote. Choose a location to discover matched specialists, local market insights and up-to-date availability.
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